My mission of mercy today was to ferry my granddaughter from her Darby Montana old folks prison to Arco Idaho where her dad met us to carry her on for a family visit. While I scored a zillion points with family for giving up my day and putting the miles on me and my car, I will admit here that the retired race car driver flogging the retired race car is not a punishment at all.
Don’t tell the family. They are bestowing “Hero points” on me for “giving up my day” and putting the miles on my car.
Not everybody is suited to ride with me, but the 17-year-old was in the right frame of mind, looking forward to spending time with her Dad and Brother and willing to go along for the ride whatever it took … the faster the better. So I drove like I was alone and she was fine with it.
We took our time getting out the door this morning. I was HAPPY to make up the “lost time” on the road. Rand McNalley and Mapquest figure it to be a 4 hour 33 minute trip each way. Three hours ten minutes including a ten-minute potty break for the kid.
Spectacular open roads.
The stay-at-home crowds were absent from Montana and Idaho highways. The Sunday drivers were home wringing their hands, or puttering in their gardens. I had very little work overtaking slow-movers on this trip… something that I normally have to work at regularly.
Including a half-hour gab session in Arco, a fuel fill-up and a couple of pee breaks, my round trip was 0945-1630 … 6 3/4 hours minus about 3/4 hour instead of the no-break elapsed time of 9 hours according to The Standard… that I cut 1/3 off of.
The real deal, however, is that nobody gets to have as much fun driving on the open road as people like me do. Most are so dang bored they are not paying attention to the task at hand, thus being far more dangerous to themselves and others than those of us focused on driving Con Brio.
The tale would be incomplete without a HUGE THANK YOU to Valentine One for liberating me of the paranoia normally attached to exceeding arbitrary speed limits designed by bureaucrats for average drivers in sub-par vehicles.
I was able to focus on the art and science of driving without having to fret about unwanted conversations with political speed-limit ENFORCERS. Thank you Mike Valentine for alerting me to several patrolmen who would have been happy to rain on my parade.
The video clip below is not from this trip, but includes my favorite part of it … the Highway 93 Hillclimb portion. The video pre-dates a tire upgrade and new, clear, unpitted windshield, both of which improve the speed and enjoyment of my uphill sprint.